Bush's team turns to the next tasks

April 11 2003By Marian WilkinsonUnited States CorrespondentWashington

The search for Saddam Hussein and the security crisis inside Iraq have emerged as urgent priorities for the US Government even as President George Bush and his senior officials celebrated the downfall of Saddam's regime.

"We still must capture, account for, or otherwise deal with Saddam Hussein and his sons and the senior Iraqi leadership," said US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

President Bush watched the fall of the great statue of Saddam in central Baghdad on television without making a public comment, but Mr Rumsfeld summed up the feelings of many in the White House when he described the events in Iraq as breathtaking.

"Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed, brutal dictators and the Iraqi people are well on their way to freedom," he said.

Vice-President Dick Cheney voiced the vindication felt in Washington at the fall of the regime, saying the end of the war "will mark one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever conducted", noting comparisons to General George Patton's famous push through France in 1944. ");document.write("

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The speed of the collapse of Saddam's Government and the first real signs of popular celebration in Baghdad have created a mood of triumph in Washington.

Mr Cheney dismissed critics of the pre-emptive war against Iraq and the war plan itself in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

"With every day and every advance by our coalition forces, the wisdom of that plan becomes more apparent," said Mr Cheney, as he praised Mr Rumsfeld and the senior military leadership, including war commander General Tommy Franks.

But both Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Cheney warned of dangerous fighting ahead from pockets of resistance in Baghdad, with parts of the city still engulfed in looting.

Mr Rumsfeld also raised the possibility that Saddam or his senior officers could have escaped to Syria.

"Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria", said Mr Rumsfeld. "We are getting scraps of intelligence saying that Syria has been cooperative in facilitating the movement of people out of Iraq into Syria."

He said the US did not know whether Saddam was alive or dead. Some analysts also believe that Saddam could be trying to reach his home city of Tikrit in the north, which is still not under coalition control.

While the US military is certain that the Iraqi regime can no longer mount a credible resistance, Mr Rumsfeld cautioned that large parts of northern Iraq, the areas dominated by Saddam's Sunni minority, were still not under coalition control.

This includes the oil-rich region of Kirkuk where Kurdish fighters are poised outside the city with US Special Forces.

There is also a growing urgency about the law-and- order vacuum in Baghdad, Basra and other centres where coalition forces have been unable to impose control so far.

Under the Geneva Conventions, coalition forces as the occupying powers are obliged to provide protection for the civilian population.

"Occupying forces are responsible for protecting civilians, not just during combat but in the aftermath of fighting," Mr Roth said.

Mr Rumsfeld said that a US-led civil administration team directed by retired general Jay Garner, who is already in Kuwait, would soon enter Iraq, but not before their security could be ensured.

Even as the fighting continued in Baghdad, divisions between the US State Department and the Defence Department continued over the postwar plans for Iraq.

The Pentagon's decision to fly opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi into the central city of Nasiriyah over the weekend has led to concerns by some in the State Department that the Pentagon is pushing Mr Chalabi for a key role in the interim authority.

Senior Pentagon officials and Mr Cheney have been supporters of Mr Chalabi. But when Mr Cheney announced that a meeting to plan the interim authority would take place in Nasiriyah next Saturday, his staff were forced to correct him.

A spokesman for US Secretary of State Colin Powell said a decision on the timing of the meeting had not been made.

The Nasiriyah meeting was not a coronation, he said, and would represent "a wide range of Iraqi groups" from inside and outside Iraq.